"The Glass Menagerie" is a play being told through the memory of Tom, one of our main characters. It is opened with him talking to the fourth wall, not done again until the end. The play is set in the Wingfields apartment in the 30's. The Main door to the apartment is a fire escape, where Tom addresses us and where many of the major events occur. It symbolizes the escape to the outside world. Amanda Wingfield is the mother. Her husband, Laura and Tom's Dad, left them 16 years ago, he was a drunkard and the mother is afraid of having a drunkard for a son-in-law. Tom and her have been supporting the family since then, she sells magazines, and Tom works at the Warehouse. Amanda appears to have been a very popular girl when she was younger, and expects the same from her crippled daughter Laura. Laura is very fragile, with a bum leg.

Laura Flanders

English: Photograph of composer Laura Schwendinger

Laura Horton

She lives in a world of glass animals, the glass menagerie. She is very shy and when she tried to attend business college, dropped out because it made her physically ill. When she was in High school she liked a boy named Jim O'Connor. He called her blue roses, and he happens to be a gentleman caller later in our story.

SCENE 1

Tom comes on stage and tells us that he will share a memory. He then shows us a portrait of his father, calling him the telephone man who fell in love with long distances. Comments on him being gone for 16 years, and then, we begin. It begins with a lot of complaining on Amanda's part, about how Tom doesn't eat right, and how Amanda doesn't have any gentleman callers, but when she was young she had many. She talks...

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... of the glass menagerie. The situation that Jim's character creates for the family makes Tom leave because he was oblivious to the fact that Jim was already engaged to be married. Amanda, being Laura's mother, only sees the heart break of her daughter ...

2 pages17Oct/20065.0

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